Latin American startups raised $4.7 billion in 2025, a 65% increase from 2024, while funding remained concentrated among a smaller group of companies, according to a report published Tuesday by startup adviser Endeavor and investment firm Glisco Partners. The report covers venture investment in Latin America. It provides no figures on migration, European borders or EU policy.
The number of funding rounds stayed well below the market’s peak. Investors completed 554 deals in 2025, compared with 788 in 2022. The figures show that the amount invested recovered even as the deal count remained below that cited peak. They don’t indicate how many people the startups employed or whether investment changed migration flows.
More money, fewer companies scaling
“The capital is returning to Latam, but the more important question is no longer how much money is coming in -- it is how many companies are actually scaling,” said Alfredo Castellanos, managing partner at Glisco Partners. His comment points to the report’s central distinction: total investment has risen, but that hasn’t meant more young businesses are advancing into larger companies.
Many of the biggest funding rounds went to companies that already had name recognition and had reached scale. Those recipients included Mexican digital payments company Clip, online used-car platform Kavak, Argentine financial app Uala and Mexican fintech Plata. The report doesn’t give individual investment totals for those companies.
Startups at the earliest stage accounted for 56% of all deals in 2025, but received only 7% of total funding. That gap separates the number of early-stage transactions from their share of invested capital. The report also found that the funding pipeline had tightened: of startups that raised seed funding in 2022, only 5% had reached the next major funding stage by year four.
AI investment and Kavak’s use of tools
Funding for companies using artificial intelligence reached $327 million in the first half of 2026, compared with $165 million in the same period a year earlier. The figures cover funding for AI companies and show an increase between the two reported periods. The report doesn’t break the numbers down by country or identify how much went to particular companies.
Kavak is using an AI “CEO” agent to handle logistics, including inventory, Chief Product Officer Alejandro Maza said. The company began using the tool in operations in the Mexican town of Cuernavaca. Maza said the tools could double profits through year-end. That’s his stated expectation; the report doesn’t say profits have already doubled.
The figures from Endeavor and Glisco Partners describe investment, deal counts, startup funding stages and a specific use of AI at Kavak. They don’t address the effects of funding on employment, wages, public services, population change or national border control. The report also doesn’t discuss European institutions or the movement of people into or within Europe. Its findings concern the concentration and progression of venture capital in Latin America.